Jorg Breu the Elder: Art, Culture and Belief in Reformation Augsburg (Histories of Vision) (Histories of Vision) (Histories of Vision)

Description

Jorg Breu belonged to the generation of German Renaissance artists that included Durer, Cranach, Grunewald, Altdorfer and, in his own city of Augsburg, Hans Burgkmair the Elder. His art registered the early reception of Italian art in Germany and spanned the dramatic years of the Reformation in Augsburg, when the city was riven with social and religious tensions. Uniquely, for a German artist, Breu left a diary chronicling his reaction to the massive social and cultural forces that engulfed him, including his own conversion to the Protestant cause. His story is representative of the condition of many artists during the Reformation years living through this watershed between two cultural eras and the enforced transfer of creative energies from religious painting to secular and applied forms of art. In this wide-ranging and original study, Andrew Morrall examines the effect of these events on the nature and practice of Jorg Breu's art and its reception, not just in his own period, but right up to the present day. Cover Half Title Title Page Copyright Page Table of Contents List of Illustrations Acknowledgements Dedication Introduction: The artist's smile 1 The artist and his workshop, C.1498-C.1517 Beginnings: the Austrian altarpieces Economic background Works in fresco Panel painting: style and patronage The artist as designer Woodcuts Designs for sculpture Designs for glass The drawings for the Months of the Year Painters, glaziers and glass-painters 2 The turn towards Italy Augsburg and the South The Aufhausen Madonna The Prayerbook of Maximilian I Image and verse The frescoes for the Augsburg Town Hall The organ shutters of the Fugger Chapel in St Anna, Augsburg The large wings The trip to Italy The small organ shutters Style and dating 3 Breu and the Reformation The course of the Reformation in Augsburg The Reformation and the arts The Chronicle Breu's Protestantism: a case study in Reformation piety Painting and the Reformation Woodcut illustrations The soldier as unrepentant thief Garlic, the Jews and 'the sleep of ignorance': The Mocking of Christ St Thomas as Exemplar of Faith: humanist responses to the Reformation and the origins of the Emblem The St Ursula Altarpiece: iconoclasm and the image question Breu and Zwinglianism The Holy Works of Mercy 4 The 'deutsch' and the 'welsch': neoclassicism and its uses 5 Conclusion Appendix: Hand-list of surviving or recorded designs for glass and glass roundels Bibliography Index